Tag Archives: London theatres

My latest charcoal theatre drawing in the “Stage Door London” series, is a principally utilitarian looking set of doors and they open onto a principally everyday West End back street in Soho. What caught my attention though, is what appears in gold lettering above them.

Stage Door

London Stage Door – Prince Edward Theatre by Douglas Rickard

The inscription on this carved tablet which I have drawn in charcoal, serve not only as an acknowledgement to “the world’s greatest artists,” but a promise.

Maybe you already own my “Theatre Royal Drury Lane” and “Lyceum Theatre” releases and would like this to make a solid set of three. Or perhaps this art, which is also available on theatre gifts and accessories will serve as a private recognition for your world’s very own greatest artist.

Have you ever meandered through the side streets of Covent Garden? These crisscrossing rows of London streets will take you past, what I find to be, fascinating back doors of West End theatres… stage doors of course. I wanted to draw one of London’s theatres, and held back from drawing the front. I thought the unassuming stage door in down-to-earth charcoal, could be an equally exciting piece of showbiz art as a colorful oil pastel of the opulent building front.

Lyceum Theatre exterior drawing

Whenever I have walked past a stage door, and I don’t know if you’re the same, I always take a look at anyone going in or coming out. I’m actually a little in awe of the talent and creativity that goes into the choreography, musical scores and performances I’ve seen in the West End. And I enjoy the idea of how actors for example, appear out of the city in their everyday clothes and slip into these stage doors and the vast, dark auditoriums beyond to come together and perform under the bright lights and whisk us away to another place. I hope my simple Lyceum Theatre drawing somehow captures a little piece of that wonder of London’s West End.